I got up early and headed west to Arizona. As you know by now, I am fascinated by the genius of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Seeing some of his greatest works for the first time has been a special privilege. Works like one of the most unique and stunning homes in America, the House of Falling Water. Or another unique piece of brilliant architecture, the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City. I am also intrigued as to where and how he worked. I have always found the studios of great artists to be fascinating – they are all so unique and different. So, when I learned that Wright not only had a home, a studio and a school for architects in Wisconsin, he also had a winter home and studio in Arizona near Scottsdale. Called Taliesin West, I looked forward to seeing it in person. So that was my number one destination in Arizona: Taliesin West.

I drove west to Phoenix, Arizona, then north to Scottsdale, Arizona which is northeast of Phoenix. Taliesin West has that immediate, special and unique Frank Lloyd Wright look. I was eager to explore it because as you may know, Wright not only designed the exterior of all his projects, he designed the interior as well. In addition to both the exterior and interior, he also designed all the furniture, the rugs, the windows, and even the dishes and eating utensils. A Wright home or project was a total experience.

You can also see from the images the scale of the project. At its peak, it was quite an artists’ colony between Wright, his family, the architectural students working on their degrees, and the staff.

After a couple of hours, I headed toward Northern Arizona and the Grand Canyon. As I drove north, the landscape became even more beautiful especially with the contrast of the red rocks and red earth and the pristine white of the snow. For me, the winter beauty reached a kind of climax when I got to Sedona.

Sedona had only been a vague word or concept for me until I saw Sedona in person. The spectacular topography, the towering red rocks, that rich red earth, the green vegetation, and the architectural structures. Sedona is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.

I drove through Sedona and continued to drive north toward the Grand Canyon. Of course, I had seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, but I had no real idea what to expect. As I approached the South Rim, suddenly I caught a glimpse of the canyon’s immensity. At first, it stretched out in front of me. Then the tremendous breadth expanded and expanded as I walked toward the edge of the canyon. And suddenly, the depth of the canyon dropped beneath me.

I had no words as I beheld for the first time in my life the largest canyon on earth. The scale of all 3 dimensions reached from horizon to horizon fading into the snowy distance tens of miles away. The depth of the canyon led my eyes down to a tiny trace of a trail leading deeper yet into the millions of years old abyss. Being late afternoon on a wintry day in December, 1964, there were but a few other people sprinkled along the South Rim of this immensity. All I could do was stare and stare at a vast natural wonder before me.

As the winter light began to fade, I knew one thing: I had to come back in the future and explore this magnificent place. There was a deep spiritual aura to this place that I had only experienced in one other place in my life: the highest altitudes of the Sierra Nevada mountains including Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the contiguous 48 states – another place I had a date with in the future.

Reluctantly I got into my filthy, sun-bleached red 1956 VW bug and began to drive. I had a date with a different kind of destiny with the United States Marine Corps and they’re not waiting on me.

As I drove south then west toward California, it was cold and dark. The highway was nearly deserted in places except for the huge cross-country truck and double trailers hauling their loads. As I drove, the past few months unfolded before my mind’s eye like a movie on fast forward. As I mentally scanned this vast country of ours, I compared my pre-trip images and expectations to the reality I would actually experience. I realized I had had barely the faintest inkling of what I was about to see and experience. Which led my thoughts and images to the approaching beginning of another journey of potentially far greater consequences. Here all I had to go on were black and white war movies of the Second World and the jungles of the South Pacific with strange sounding names.

At least with the journey was just completing, I had some semblance of control. I could stop when I wanted to stop. I could eat when I wanted to eat. When I got tired, I could rent a cheap motel and crash. I could sleep until the knock on my door signaling check-out time. I could look at my map and chart my course. But I intuited that during the trip I was about to begin in a matter of days, I was going to have a lot less control. A black and white image popped into my head. It was from a movie I had seen when I was about 12 years old. It starred the actor Jack Webb.  The movie was called “The D.I.” Webb played a non-nonsense Marine Corps Drill Instructor. I don’t recall Webb’s Drill Instructor asking any of the recruits in his bootcamp platoon their opinion about anything. It was about as black and white my way (the Marine Corps’s way), or the highway. Webb played the part of the Drill Instructor. He made it crystal clear that he was not kidding. He was dead serious. He was getting these young men ready for war. And combat in war is literally life and death.

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Joe